Po disruptes our dailys
Hello everyone,
following situation occured: Our Product Owner attended the daily a few times and he also participated in it. Participation can be good if the Dev Team has questions which the PO could solve. But the PO just added comments of his own to the work done by the dev team and so disrupted the meeting.
As scrum master i coached the Scrum Team about the purpose of the daily.
For a few meetings the situation was quiet better. But now the PO starts all over again. Now im wondering about what to do:
The Scrum Guide states. The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team.
If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.
My preferred solution would be that the dev team handle this situation by itself. So do nothing in the daily, i dont have to be there.
Instead taking this topic to the retrospective would be fine for me.
But does ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting also includes that i could tell the product owner to stop attending the next daily? He could be there for questions after the daily....
On the other hand i, as scrum master, could also attend the daily and react to this situation as it occurs so that no one (po in this case) could disrupt the meeting.
But this also seems wrong to me, because i would play a part in an meeting which is only for the dev team.
How would you handel it?
Greetings
Ken
How effectively does the PO collaborate with the team throughout the rest of the day?
How effectively does the PO collaborate with the team throughout the rest of the day?
Second that. And what might the underlying issue be here?
Hello Ken,
Best way to address is, to have one on one conversation with PO and explain/coach him about purpose of Daily StandUp (DSU) meeting. He might be aware of these points but its always to good to remind them cognizently. Also try to get his point of view for intervening during the stand up meeting and see if team's updates includes the level of details he is looking after.
Hope it helps!
Hello Ken,
my humble point of view (I'm a PO): yes, this needs to be addressed in the retrospective. I'd like to believe that the PO doesn't mean to be disruptive but maybe just doesn't know that he or she needs to be quiet unless explicitly asked a question by the development team. The PO may attend but not actively participate as far as the daily scrum is concerned. When I was new to scrum as a PO it was a bit of a struggle for me too but those are the rules ;-) So, maybe the PO just doesn't know. In that case it would be the SM's job to inform the PO. If it turns out to be neccessary for you as the SM to attend the daily scrums for a certain period of time to ensure the compliance of the PO, I'd say you should do so in order to help the development team to be productive by keeping everybody in line with the framework.
I attend every DSU just for this reason. I have 5 teams and the PO's actually believe they manage the team. I am trying to coach that out of them.
The PO's also attend DSU's and they can get vocal which I am trying to coach out of them. I use things like sidebars and table discussions for after the DSU. Sometimes you have to be a referee via influence.
My goal is for neither I or the PO to be in stand ups all the time at some point.
Although SM's are not required, they can help facilitate if needed. If you feel interjecting with something like "Can we take that offline?" will not be accepted well, feel free to talk to the PO afterwards. No need to wait until Retro or to wait for it to turn into a bigger problem before addressing it.
Remember, you're all on the same team and nobody reports to anyone. If they do, then remind them that in Standup the Manager hat is off and the PO hat is on.
Should be ok to reiterate the purpose of this precious 15min and that folks are allowed to have conversations afterwards still. Could also reiterate the Scrum Values that must be applied in the daily scrum event (Courage, Openness, Focus, Commitment, and Respect).
Are you able to identify the reasoning behind the types of information the PO is providing or asking for? Does the PO use the meeting to get the info he/she isn't able to obtain through the stories?
There is a side-effect of asking the PO to keep quiet during standup and that's of the PO becoming constant disruption throughout the day instead.
>But the PO just added comments of his own to the work done by the dev team and so disrupted the meeting.
Could having a shorter sprint length help the PO with risk and uncertainty?
Is refinement something constantly being done to PBL items? As refinement would help in breaking down items and revising them, as stated in the Scrum guide, this helps the PBI's garner transparency